Luddites seek to restrict franchise to anonymous blog posters in prelude to wee junta.

It’s hardly surprising that for some, a new year’s “new beginning” is little more than a hasty regurgitation of the same agenda-laden agitprop of their previous twelve defeat-plagued months, which naturally brings to mind the familiar definition of insanity:

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Which brings us, suitably kicking and screaming like sleep-deprived banshees, to the next item on the New Albany political calendar: The City Council’s selection of a President, which is slated for the body’s first 2006 meeting on Monday, January 9 (note the meeting date change).

What’s at stake? According to New Albany’s code of ordinances:

TITLE III: ADMINISTRATION
CHAPTER 30: COMMON COUNCIL
30.16 PRESIDENT.

(A) The President shall preside at all meetings, preserve order, decorum and decide all questions of order subject to appeal to the Common Council. He shall appoint all standing committees and all special committees that may be ordered by the Council. All standing committees shall be appointed at the commencement of each year of the term of Council and shall serve only during the term of the President appointing same. He shall fill all existing vacancies that may thereafter occur in any of such committees.

(B) He shall sign all ordinances, orders and resolutions passed by the Council before their presentation to the Mayor, as well as the journal of proceedings.

(C) He shall vote on all issues, his name being called last.

('71 Code, §30.05) (Ord. 4600, passed 3-4-57)

There seems to be nothing explicitly written herein suggesting heroic presidential powers to call for audits, investigations and carryout Chinese from Hing Wang, but maybe we’re not reading closely enough between the lines.

Already the political odds makers are surveying the tea leaves, casting the leadership contest as a fight between at-large CM Donnie Blevins and the Wizard of Westside, 1st District CM Dan Coffey, and foreseeing a 4-4 split with the lone Republican councilman, Mark Seabrook, holding the kingmaker’s deciding vote.

Down at the Luddite Bar & Grill, Coffey has received early support from the sparse and motley crowd of choleric naysayers, squelch-blooded obstructionists and hooded libel-peddlers who devote hours of meandering blog karaoke to the pronouncements of the Trog Sham(an), who provides this somewhat less than inspiring endorsement for CM Coffey:

He may be brash, and he may indeed be guilty of a bit of grandstanding at times, but I would still rather put the the next year of this faltering City in the hands of a bold personality than I would those of a meek and unknowledgeable newcomer, just because he is NOT Dan Coffey …

… Don't get me wrong folks, I am not a Dan Coffey "fan", and we have had our share of differences along the way. However, I am willing to put aside those differences, and step back to look at what the City needs as a whole. This isn't about personality conflicts, this is business.

For Trog Sham to prefer the “boldness” of CM Coffey, an underachieving council veteran, to the “meek and unknowledgeable newcomer,” CM Blevins, is perfectly acceptable as a matter of opinion, but it is highly disingenuous for her to piously insist that this preference does not derive from “personality conflicts.”

Given the tortured worldview of the unhappy crowd at the Luddite, it’s not just a personality conflict that is being expressed by open contempt for CM Blevins – it’s the very ultimate in personality conflicts.

For those who remain wedded to the immobile, demeaning and futile doctrine of fixed social class, CM Blevins has committed the unpardonable sin of failing to fall on his sword for the sake of his brethren, i.e., the soon-to-disappear sanitation department.

It is an intense, vitriolic and deeply personal conflict, and should be viewed accordingly sans insincere whitewash.

But … always dimly aware that some semblance of intellectual legitimacy must be contrived to hurriedly veil such naked, undisguised acrimony so as to provide a purely expedient but sloppy patina of respectability, Trog Sham’s advocacy of CM Coffey – to her, the anti-Blevins – leads to the bizarre argument that people like CM Blevins shouldn’t allowed in a council seat in the first place:

… City employees sitting as general Council Members are practically inviting trouble, as their employment with the City will certainly carry some weight in their decision making and voting on matters that directly, or indiretly, impact the departments they are associated with. Already, we've witnessed complications that arose from City employee and Council Member, Donnie Blevins …

Even Jack Messer, as a City Police Officer, is straddling the fence by holding a seat on the Council, because he is percieved as having too much influence in too many arenas of City business. This caused great concern when he was considered for the position of Code Enforcement Officer, and eventually led to a great deal of anomosity as tempers flared on both sides of the issue …

… I ask you, does Jack Messer really even belong on the Council, as a matter of principle?

Breathtakingly, Trog Sham drags CM Messer back into the line of fire while positing that it is a logical impossibility for a city employee – or more accurately, a city employee who disagrees with her -- to serve as an elected official without an unavoidable, intolerable, built-in conflict of interest, and thus she proposes to erect yet another barrier to civic participation in her ideal troglodyte encampment.

This morning, on his blog, former councilman Maury Goldberg asks:

No employees of the City of New Albany should be President of the New Albany City Council? Ok. Should Floyd County Council President Ted Hearvin, an employee of the Floyd County Sheriff Department, quit as its president? Or let’s pose the question: Should a governmental employee be allowed to hold an elective office?

Taking Trig Sham’s ill-considered disenfranchisement plea to its logical conclusion would result in barring numerous citizens from elected office, because in addition to incumbents like Heavrin, Messer and Blevins, there are other unsuitable elements lurking within the halls of the City-County Building, aren’t there?

CM Seabrook operates a business – will he seek to manipulate council business to improve the prospects for his own?

CM Bev Crump sells real estate – are we saying that she can’t be trusted to exercise judgment on zoning issues?

CM Steve Price owns rental property – surely we can’t expect him to remain impartial on issues impacting his investment?

Here is an excerpt from the FAQ at the Robert’s Rules of Order web site:

Under the rules in RONR, no member can be compelled to refrain from voting simply because it is perceived that he or she may have some "conflict of interest" with respect to the motion under consideration. If a member has a direct personal or pecuniary (monetary) interest in a motion under consideration not common to other members, the rule in RONR is that he should not vote on such a motion, but even then he or she cannot be compelled to refrain from voting. [RONR (10th ed.), p. 394, l. 15-25.]

The mere possibility of a council member failing to exercise proper discretion in a case of “direct personal or pecuniary (monetary) interest” does not provide sufficient grounds for seeking to ban an entire segment of the city’s population from public service.

In fact, applying this ludicrous “no city employee” standard to the question of public service inevitably leads to an equally ludicrous conclusion, holding that because virtually any responsive individual in the community who works toward its betterment shares a conflict of interest in the broader sense that community improvement benefits each and every resident, including himself or herself, then only those with no interest at all in community improvement can be relied upon to properly serve the community.

Huh? How many Brambleberries can we expect to find?

Given that in the past months, Trog Sham’s supporters have advanced variously loony ideas that if taken literally would preclude newcomers, non-property owners, non-Christians and book readers from taking part in the local civic dialogue, those whiffs of fascistic intolerance we’re smelling are becoming increasingly odious – and more pathetically desperate – with each passing day.

In fact, each current sitting city council member is qualified to serve on the council, having met eligibility standards and having been elected by voters who are perfectly free to repudiate their choices in the forthcoming 2007 contest.

In fact, and furthermore, each currently sitting city council member is qualified, according to the rules of the game, to serve as President of the council during 2006.

NA Confidential believes that CM Blevins is as good a choice as any sitting council member for the presidency, and that he is a better choice than CM Coffey, who while not the worst imaginable prospect (see “3rd council district, shame of”), is philosophically and temperamentally unsuited to preserve order, to preserve decorum, and to act as the city council’s face to the public for the coming year, a year in which the city of New Albany will begin substantive building upon its hard-earned progress of the months past.

For now, we’ll leave it at that.